Morayo Faleyimu is currently serving as an Editor-in-Residence at Girls Write Now. She is a writer of short and long-form fiction. A nonfiction writer by trade, Morayo uses fiction to explore emotional truths. The seeds of story, she believes, are planted in everyday life. A writer’s duty is to pay attention and to garden with care. A former educator, Morayo currently works as a professional development writer for a school network in New Jersey.

Nicole Marie Gervasio, Ph.D. is a Lecturer-in-Discipline of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, where she teaches the flagship literature course for all first-year students. To date, she is the only instructor to have won Columbia’s Core Meyerson Award for Teaching Excellence in Literature Humanities twice, in addition to the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student. Until recently, she worked at PEN America, where she curated New York’s largest annual international literary festival and developed community-engaged writing programs for low-wage workers and recent migrants to the US. Prior to 2019, she served as a postdoctoral fellow in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Brown University and received her Ph.D. in postcolonial literature and feminist theory at Columbia University, where her dissertation focused on the politics of representing state violence in contemporary literature from around the world. At present, she is finishing her first novel, a dark satire and coming-of-age tale about a young terrorist who misperceives his white male privilege and questionable sanity as the incendiary potential America needs to start a cultural revolution. She has been a mentor in the Writing Mentoring Program at Girls Write Now on and off since 2015 and also volunteers at Word Up Community Bookshop / Librería Comunitaria in Washington Heights, which she encourages everyone to visit.

Stephanie Golden is an award-winning author of ten books, including seven collaborations with experts (most covering health, fitness, and medicine) and two books on women’s issues: “Slaying the Mermaid: Women and the Culture of Sacrifice” and “The Women Outside: Meanings and Myths of Homelessness.” Her articles and essays have appeared in Tricycle, Yoga Journal, The Startup, Aeon.co, and Salon, among other publications. Stephanie is also a book doctor and writes websites, newsletters, training manuals, and reports. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Mentor Donna Hill is a multi-published author with more than 90 published titles to her credit. Three of her novels were adapted for television. Most recently, her novel Confessions is B-Flat is be adapted for the screen with Amblin Partners and Executive Producer Octavia Spencer. Donna has an MFA in Creative Writing and is currently an Assistant Professor at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn.

Carol Hymowitz is a journalist and author. She reports and writes about the challenges and opportunities of living longer for the Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg and Next Avenue. She formerly was an editor at large at Bloomberg and a senior editor and columnist at the Wall Street Journal, where she spent most of her journalism career. She’s known for popularizing the term “the glass ceiling” in a WSJ article, and is co-author of A History of Women in America. She received a B.A. with honors in literature from Brandeis University and an M.S. from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Elizabeth Koster’s work has appeared in Fourth Genre, Split Lip, River Teeth, Hobart, Lost Balloon, Sweet, Five Minutes, and The New York Times Modern Love column. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University and teaches writing in New York City.

Faran Krentcil is a writer and editor in New York City. She is currently the editorial director of Wild Elements and a contributing editor at ELLE; she also writes feature pieces for Harper’s Bazaar, InStyle, and W Magazine. Faran is the founding editor of Fashionista.com; she also writes plays and draws sparkles.